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Wendy Lichtman writes personal essays for the Washington Post, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Good Housekeeping, among other national publications. She has also written four previous young adult novels, including Do the Math: Secrets, Lies, and Algebra. She holds a degree in mathematics and has tutored public-school students in algebra for several years. When she decided to write about a teenage girl who realizes that some questions have more than one right answer, algebra, with its unknowns and variables, seemed a perfect metaphor. Wendy Lichtman lives in Berkeley, California.

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Tess loves math because it's the one subject she can trust—there's always just one right answer, and it never changes. But then she starts algebra and is introduced to those pesky and mysterious variables, which seem to be everywhere in eighth grade. When even your friends and parents can be variables, how in the world do you find out the right answers to the really important questions, like what to do about a boy you like or whom to tell when someone's done something really bad?

Will Tess's life ever stop changing long enough for her to figure it all out?

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Do the Math: Secrets, Lies, and Algebra

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Chapter One

Inequalities

The copy room at my school is actually just a closet next to Ms. Balford's office, so when Richard came in and said, "Hey, Tess," he was standing about two inches behind me. "Could I borrow the machine for a second?" he whispered, closing the door quietly.

I took a stack of paper from the drawer, turned away from Richard, and refilled the empty tray while I tried to decide what I should answer.

The only reason I'm allowed to use the copy machine is that it's my job to make three hundred copies of the newsletter every Thursday. Ms. Balford never exactly said that I shouldn't let anyone else in the room, but when she showed me where she hung the key she made a big deal about how she trusted me, so I knew I wasn't supposed to let anyone just stroll in.

"I heard you were the reason the math team won on Saturday," Richard said before I decided anything.

"Not really," I said, but I kind of smiled at that, because in the final round I was the one who had answered the last question correctly, so in a way it was true that I was the reason we won.

If coolness could be rated on a 10-point scale, Richard would be at least a 9. He's one of the bestbasketball players at Westlake School, he's extremely good-looking, and his father is some big deal—not a mayor, but something like that.

On basketball game days the boys on the team have to wear ties to school, so that afternoon in the copy room Richard was wearing a light blue shirt with a green and blue tie that had a small print of Mickey Mouse on it. It may not sound great, but he looked very good.

When my hair's okay and I'm wearing something like the red sweater that zips and my black jeans, my looks might be about an 8, but today I wasn't wearing anything great and my hair is still a weird length because of the stupid haircut that made my ponytail about two inches long. Miranda says I have "naturally great skin" because I don't break out, and "perfect proportions" because I'm not skinny or fat, but even Miranda says the haircut was a mistake. Anyway, I would have to say that in the copy room I looked 6.5, at best.

We're spending a lot of time studying inequalities in algebra now, which makes sense, since who you're greater than (>) and who you're less than (<) is kind of the point of eighth grade. So when I finished putting more paper in the top tray, I stepped aside and said, "Go ahead," because we both knew that Richard was > me (R>T).

Richard acted like he wasn't doing anything wrong, but I could tell that he was trying to hide the papers he was copying. I pretended to look for the stapler so he wouldn't think I was snooping, but Richard is not stupid.

Neither am I. When I saw the words "Your Constitution" and about five pages of questions, I knew exactly what he was doing. Next Monday all eighth graders have to take a test on the U.S. Constitution, and Richard had obviously stolen the test off Mr. Wright's desk and was making a copy so he could put the original one back and not get caught.

Richard has these perfectly straight teeth even though he never wore braces, and you can tell he knows how good he looks when he smiles. He smiled at me when he finished copying the stolen test and said, "Thanks a lot, Tess," and I said, "No problem," even though there was one.

The problem was that I felt angry because Richard thought he could sneak into the copy room when I was in there and I wouldn't say anything because of who he is. I was angry at myself, too, because I didn't say anything. And I know that if someone like Lynn, who lies all the time and tells everyone that she's best friends with Miranda and me, had come in to copy a stolen test when I was working, I would have told her no way, because it's pretty obvious that L

In math, if a number is greater than or less than another one, that never changes. The inequality 11>7 is always true, for example. But with people, that's not the way it works.

Now that I know Richard stole the U.S. Constitution test, and he knows I know, I think our inequality may have changed. Maybe now T=R.

Excerpted from Do the Math: Secrets, Lies, and Algebraby Wendy Lichtman Copyright © 2008 by Wendy Lichtman. Excerpted by permission.
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